FASTLENS NEWS_FLASH FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PANASONIC ANNOUNCES AN EXCITING NEW DEVELOPMENT

IN DIGITAL CAMERAS

New LUMIXä Digital Camera Line is first to combine world-renowned Leica

Optics with advanced Panasonic audio video technology for

the perfect balance of art and science

TORONTO, ON (January, 2002) — Panasonic has developed an exciting new digital camera line that will revolutionize the world of digital photography. Building upon its relationship with world-renowned Leica Camera AG of Solms, Germany, Panasonic is the first consumer electronics company to incorporate Leica lenses in its entire 2002 Lumix™ digital still camera line. The new Panasonic Lumix cameras herald a new standard of quality and refinement in digital photography. Combining superlative optics and unparalleled digital electronics technology, the Lumix line seamlessly integrates the systems that capture the images in all their clarity and detail with the technology that processes those images and converts them into works of creative statement.

Not only do these cameras produce high-quality, professional-looking digital photographs, but their convenient, user-friendly features make multimedia applications quick and easy. Featuring built-in USB ports* and SD Memory Card slots, the four new

Mega-pixel digital cameras also offer consumers networking versatility with PCs and a wide variety of compatible SD-enabled devices.

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Panasonic Lumix cameras were designed to emulate a film camera’s "feel," ideal in size, weight and balance, and with consideration made for every control button, knob and switch.

"The new Lumix line elevates the performance standard of digital still cameras to a new level," said Barry Murray, Marketing Director of Panasonic Imaging Group. "Panasonic wanted to create a digital camera that allows artistic statement as well as all the applications made possible by digital technology. With the Leica lens and new imaging technologies, we’ve succeeded in creating a digital camera that is responsive, precise and easy to use - a high-performance, digital imaging product with the heart and soul of a fine instrument."

In the world of professional photography, Leica lenses retain a legendary reputation for creating images that capture the most delicate nuances of light and shade, the elusive ambience of "air," and subtle gradations of color. The finely crafted LEICA DC VARIO-SUMMICRON and DC VARIO-ELMARIT lenses have been incorporated into the Lumix line of cameras in order to render images with more warmth, subtlety and expressiveness than ever before achieved with a digital camera.

But it takes more than a great lens to produce a great picture. Panasonic developed new and enhanced technologies to convert the optical data from the lens into digital information.

New Mega-pixel CCDs capture images with incredible clarity and detail. Models DMC-F7 and DMC-LC20 feature a 2.1 Mega-pixel CCD (2.0 mega camera effective pixels); the DMC-LC40 and top-of-the- line DMC-LC5 feature 4.0 Mega-pixel CCDs (3.9 mega camera effective pixels). Traditionally, the use of more pixels translates into more detail but less light sensitivity. To counter this phenomenon, Panasonic uses an innovative gapless lens in the DMC-LC40 and DMC-L5 to boost light-collecting efficiency. The size of the pixels has also been increased to 3.25 microns, allowing them to receive an extra margin of light.

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To capture sudden events as they unfold, Panasonic wanted to develop a fast, responsive digital camera that could take consecutive pictures nearly as quickly as a motor-driven film camera. The new MEGA BURST™ recording feature, a Panasonic exclusive, combines four frames per second or five frames per second, depending upon the model, with undiminished quality from frame to frame. Users can shoot up to a maximum of eight frames (depending upon model) - and the last frame will be just as clear and crisp as the first. This industry-first achievement of dramatically increasing the speed and resolution of sequential shots is due to Panasonic’s new High Speed Multitasking Image Processing technique, which replaces the time-consuming serial signal processing method with a more advanced parallel processing technique.

Each camera’s CCD colour filter is specifically designed to optimize the performance of the particular Leica lens used. Models DMC-F7 and DMC-LC20 feature a primary colour filter for precise colour reproduction in images captured by the LEICA DC VARIO-ELMARIT lens. For models DMC-LC40 and DMC-L5, Panasonic chose a complementary colour filter to harmonize with the LEICA DC VARIO-SUMMICRON lens’s F2.0 brightness and the rich gradation produced by these models’ 4.0 Mega-pixel CCDs. Going a step further, Panasonic developed new Pure Colour Engine LSI circuitry to work with the DMC-LC40’s and DMC-L5’s lens systems. It converts the CCD output signal into an RGB signal at an early stage and extracts the low frequency luminance component, resulting in superb colour reproduction.

For precise, instant focusing, a new hybrid auto focus system in the DMC-L5 shatters the myth of a digital camera’s slow response. This system cuts focusing time to less than half that of previous Panasonic cameras.

Digital images can be downloaded to a PC or removable memory card, transferred to CD-Rs, printed out, viewed on a TV or computer screen, or attached to an e-mail message. With digital cameras, taking the picture is just the start of the creative process. Advanced digital technology and networking capability let consumers enjoy their beautiful photos in exciting new ways.

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The magic of digital technology makes it easy for anyone to edit and enhance their images with the included ArcSoftä photo editing software. Using a photo editing web site like PictureStage.com, consumers can also store their photos in personal, online albums; create printed materials such as posters or calendars featuring their images; or have their photos printed on gifts like t-shirts and coffee mugs.

The Lumix cameras feature a memory card slot that is compatible with either SD Memory Cards or a MultiMediaCard™. An 8MB, 16MB or 32MB SD Memory Card, depending upon the model, is included with each Lumix camera. About the size of a postage stamp, the SD card features large storage, great flexibility, excellent security and fast data transfer. The medium allows for the quick, easy exchange of images, music, video and slide presentations among a growing number of SD Memory Card-enabled devices, including audio products, camcorders, memo recorders and handheld computers and PDAs.

Most models feature both a 3x optical and a 2x digital zoom. Models DMC-LC40 and DMC-LC5 include a long-life, rechargeable Lithium Ion battery, helping to ensure that users will always have the power to capture that unexpected, once-in-a-lifetime shot.

Panasonic digital cameras are marketed in Canada by Panasonic Canada Inc. (PCI). PCI is a principal Canadian subsidiary of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., (MEI) of Japan, one of the world’s largest producers of electronic and electric products for consumer, business and industrial use. All prices are in Canadian dollars. (Consumers seeking more information on the company’s products can call Panasonic’s Customer Care Centre at 905-624-5505 or access Panasonic’s home page at www.panasonic.ca).

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MODEL AVAILABILITY MSRP* DMC-F7 Early Spring, 2002 TBA DMC-LC20 Early Spring, 2002 TBA DMC-LC40 Early Spring, 2002 TBA DMC-LC5 Early Spring, 2002 TBA

-- Bob Todrick (bobtodrick@yahoo.com), February 03, 2002

Answers

Sounds great, but I will be interested in reading some unbiased reviews of what these cameras are cabable of after they become avaialble. I think this year's crop of better digitals are good enough in quality that I'm actually thinking about getting one by the end of the year. I am still concerned about ergonomics, including a decent finder, storage, transfer and software problems, etc.

"Panasonic Lumix cameras were designed to emulate a film cameraÂ’s "feel," ideal in size, weight and balance, and with consideration made for every control button, knob and switch."-- If this turns out to be true, Could be very promising.

-- Andrew Schank (aschank@flash.net), February 03, 2002.

Reading bewteen the lines of ad-speak I come up with two salient points:

1) These are 2 and 4 megapixel cameras being introduced at a time when 5 megapixels are already available in affordable consumer cameras like the Nikon 5000 and Minolta D'Image 7.

2) These are not interchangeable-lens bodies, so it's still up for grabs whether our Leica M and R lenses will be useful as more than paperweights in the "digital age".

Basically these cameras sound like Leica's P&S's.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), February 03, 2002.

Leica repair person Sherry Krauter told me earlier this year she was concerned about becoming "obsolete" in some near digital future, and hoped Leica would come out with a digital M body. Jay may be right about the P&S part, but the pixel count rating seems to be over emphasized by many manufactureres. Sometimes a camera with a lower pixel rating out performes the higher rated ones if the camera is using top notch components. Lets hope those Leica lenses are something special and not just another P&S quality zoom lens. The 4 meg camera could be a top notch performer, but a new 2 meg camera debuting in 2002 isn't going to get too many people exited.

-- Andrew Schank (aschank@flash.net), February 03, 2002.

I agree with you, Andrew. All those megapixels are only as good as their content. I remember (not that long ago) nasty artifacts and horrible color, etc. in very expensive p & s type digitals. Let's hope these are as good as all the typical hype!

-- Lance Goins (goinsphoto@hotmail.com), February 03, 2002.

Pixel resolution is only half the game. A 35mm frame has about 4k-5k of information on it. The biggest problem with digital cameras is their limited dynamic range. It's like shooting slidefilm. If you have ever had the chance to examine a Cineon format film scan, you would be floored at the amazing about of color information that film has.

feli

-- Feli di Giorgio (feli@d2.com), February 04, 2002.

I went with a digital camera recently, a Sony DSC-F707. I have to admit that I'm stunned with how good it is. It's producing a ton of excellent pictures for me. The control of dynamic range is amazing; color, detail, focus, exposure, options to manipulate the image are all just excellent. I've printed several 11x17" prints with extremely satisfying results. This is a 5Mpixel camera ... I can only hope that Panasonic moves fast and comes up with a competitive 5MPixel camera carrying Leica optics. If the Lumix cameras are up to it, they will be a boon to photography.
< BR> Some of my pix:
PAW 2002 Week 5
PAW 2002 Week 6
Alternates links on both of the above point to small galleries of more digicam pix.
Friends


-- Godfrey (ramarren@bayarea.net), February 04, 2002.

GRR...

Friends

-- Godfrey (ramarren@bayarea.net), February 04, 2002.

I went to a site someone here pointed me at some time back with a review of the Nikon 5000 and was very disappointed by the colour fringing in the sample snaps - it seemed completely unacceptable. Can anyone confirm whether this is a problem or not?

-- rob (rob@robertappleby.com), February 04, 2002.

I recently heard this story.

Someone bought a (I believe) D'image 7 for it's pixels. When he started using it he found out that on a 64MB card h could store 4 pic's only. In 2M pixel mode he could store many more (60?). So now he uses it only in 2M pixel mode

Reinier

-- ReinierV (rvlaam@xs4all.nl), February 04, 2002.

Well, there are products like the Digital Wallet which will store 6 Gb of data, which would be the equivalent of 600 10 Mb images (about a full 35 mm scan at 2700 dpi in PS jpg quality 12). That should solve it!

-- rob (rob@robertappleby.com), February 04, 2002.

I've found with the Sony that storing images in TIFF uncompressed mode gives only the tiniest edge in quality over storing in JPEG - "Fine" quality but each image then consumes 14 MByte of storage compared to 1-3MByte. So for most of my photos, I store everything in JPEG "Fine" ... that's between 50 and 70 photos per 128MB storage card. I bought 8 128MByte cards so I've got the potential to store about 500 photos before I need to upload to a larger storage device. That's what I feel is necessary to be able to carry the camera on trips; on my last two trips of a week or so, I shot 10-13 rolls of 36 exposure film each. You do tend to shoot more with the digicam.

-- Godfrey (ramarren@bayarea.net), February 04, 2002.

I have seen a photo of the top-of-the-line model (DMC-LC5). I looks alot like the Contax G2 rangefinder camera. The lens is non- interchangable.

-- mario (mario.dilembo@videotron.ca), February 04, 2002.

Panasonic/Lei ca digital cameras.

-- Hoyin Lee (leehoyin@hutchcity.com), February 05, 2002.

And for the gaijin, a babelfish.

-- Oliver Schrinner (piraya@hispavista.com), February 05, 2002.